Recently as an assignment for my Business Practices course I was asked to chose and interview a professional in the photography industry.  I sent out several emails not knowing who would respond, or who would respond in time for my assignment requirement.  I was very lucky to have one of my favorite photographers reply with in an hour of sending the email.  You can read the first part here.

Part 2

David Perkins – Great.  One thing I wanted to touch on real quick is the talk of video being the future of photography.  How do you think video will affect the commercial work such as your own?

Andrew Eccles – It’s funny you ask.  I’ll try to keep this short, because I can probably go on and on about it.  I’ve had this conversation with three different people in three different locations in the last week alone.  Are you aware of the RED camera?

DP – Yes.

AE – Yah, so the RED camera, which is soon to be the Scarlet camera, which after that it’s probably going to be the… I don’t know, the hot magenta camera. Whatever the name, it will keep evolving and it’s probably going to get smaller, lighter, more user friendly.  It’s a big camera right now.  A lot of clients don’t understand it, but what I imagine to be the case, and I really do think this will happen in my life time, in my career, and probably soon.  The same way that we already made the move from film to digital, I think we are moving towards moving imagery.  I think there will be two end results from that.  Right now, some people are using the RED camera properly, which used in it’s best sense, is when you are filming some kind of broadcasting content or web content, and then you are doing it in a way that you are technically able to get a resolution so that you can withdraw a still and then in turn use it for print.  Right?  That’s the best possible use of the RED camera.  Not very many people are using it that way, hah.  I have clients that are asking me to shoot web content and for their websites we can use the RED cam but they’re not interested in extracting stills for the print, so I’m still doing a whole print situation, shooting with my medium format print cameras, additional computer set up and digital techs there, and I’ve got everything set up with the RED camera over there… it costs a fortune!  I think eventually it will evolve to a place where it is one camera, a moving camera, the same way that everyone has snappy cameras now.

If you have a Canon G10 or 11 you probably don’t own a Sony video camera.  If you want video content you shoot it with your snappy camera.  What the advantage of this will be if it gets there is that I can have one camera in the studio, and say I’m shooting a movie poster like I did last week in Atlanta, and it was Owen Wilson and another guy from Saturday Night Live.  When you do movie posters, you get lots of sketches with lots of ideas, and one of the sketches that we always seem to get is the actor’s walking towards the camera.  Well when you are shooting with a still camera and lots of lights like I am, what you have to do is get someone to stand on the mark, focus, the actor’s back up, they take two steps, you shoot, and you do it again.  Back up, two steps, shoot, do it again.    Imagine using the RED camera and just saying “action” and they walk toward the camera maybe a couple of times, and you go back and edit out a couple of the best frames of them walking.  We save time and the resolution is just as good.  That applies to jumping up and down, to a print ad for a hair product like Clairol, a model stands in the studio and she swings her hair back and forth and then you go back and look at the film and find that perfect moment.  That’s what I think it’s going towards.  Now I think it’s going to move towards that in two ways.

1. Already a lot of the exterior advertising, billboards and bus sides, they’re already moving.  There was the movie Blade Runner…

DP – Right I remember it.

AE – …and that was way back in the 80’s, in that movie, all the advertisements were moving.  It was so ahead of its time.  That’s what we’re heading towards.  If you go anywhere in Asia, or just in Times Square, so many of the billboards are moving now.  So, if it gets to the point where we are all shooting with things like the RED camera then we can be shooting the moving content and be extracting stills for when we need the stills.  That’s why I think it’s inevitable that we’re going to end up there.

DP – You have a very diverse portfolio.  In class, we talk about specializing our work when starting out.  Have you always had a diverse portfolio, did you start out specialized?  What do you think about that concept?

AE – Well I think the diversity comes over time as you are given more opportunities, but I think having an essential core style or vibe to the work, is as important as just staying in one specialized area.  Now I think when you start, it’s not a bad idea to have somewhat of a genre.  Yuh know a buddy of mine, Danny Clinche, probably one of the best-known music photographers in the world, he started with music and he stuck with it.  He tried to veer off and branch out in to actor’s and actresses and he just, he didn’t really like it, he likes hanging with musicians. It’s where he belongs, it’s his thing, yuh know?  For me the very first assignment I had was a dance company, I’ve always been comfortable with dancer’s so I did sort of start doing a “thing”.  The dancer’s and dance pictures kind of let to me doing fitness stuff, and the fitness stuff kind of eventually led to stories and magazines, and as soon as they realized I can make men and women look good then I started getting actors and actresses.  So specializing certainly isn’t a bad idea, but you don’t want to get pigeonholed.   You don’t want to be the wide angle, cross-process guy that only does that.  So, you don’t want to put yourself in to a corner, but I think even if you’re photographing diverse subject matter, the key is having a style, a look, a vibe. Whether that comes from your lighting, or the way you end up saturating or de-saturating your final pictures. If you’re shooting stuff that looks like it was shot by ten different photographers it probably won’t do you any good.

DP – Real quick, you mentioned that you first started out working with a dance company. Can you tell me who they were?

AE – (sigh of “crap, what was their name?”) Yeah, it was in NY… and that was an example of a job that came from assisting Annie Leibovitz.  Annie was working with a dance company and their manager ended up going to work for another company that had no money.  When I left Annie they called me because they knew they couldn’t afford Annie and called me to ask if I would do it.  It was a company called the David Gordon Pick up Company here in NY.  A very avant-garde, creative dance company, because they were so artistic they were totally starving.  I shot it for free.  But those pictures were pretty good, and I bonded with the dancer’s and got their phone numbers and got together with them and did some personal pictures with some of them and that was really the corner stone to my first portfolio.  And, when I showed those pictures to people, they kind of confused them with fitness pictures, heh, so that’s when I started getting fitness gigs.  The fitness gigs were good, there was a lot of them.  It kept me working right out of the starting gate, I was shooting almost every day.

DP – I don’t know if you remember from the email I sent you but I personally have been shooting dance for a while.

AE – Oh yeah, yeah.

DP – So one of the things I’d love to talk about is your work with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company.  If you could tell me about how you got that job, and your experiences with them?

AE – Sure. The book and gallery project that I sort of talked about earlier, Ailey Ascending was a book I shot with the company and Judith Jamison, the director, who I’d gotten to know really well over the years asked if I would create a book that would commemorate their 50^th anniversary that was a photo book, no text, all pictures, all me, just shot now.  Not historic, not pictures over the last 10 years.  Brand new pictures.  That’s kind of where we arrived at, but the start goes back a long ways.  I was assigned by a magazine many years ago to photograph Alvin Ailey himself.  I didn’t really know who he was, I had only heard of the company, but I did a little photo session with him and the pictures were pretty amazing, very stirring portraits.  It was three months later to the day that he passed away.

DP – Wow.

AE – It was just a kind of weird coincidence.  A few years later I was assigned by I think, Dance Magazine, to photograph Judith who was named the new director of the company.  We had a similar experience, we got a long really well, she was very collaborative, the same way Alvin was for these pictures, the pictures were great, she loved them like me, and she pulled me in to shoot one of their advertising shoots.  It went very nicely.  She didn’t use me exclusively for the first couple of years; she would veer off and use other photographers.  But probably about eight or nine years ago she pretty much has gone to me for all of their advertising and entertainment pictures.  Ironically enough, I’m shooting with them next week for their next campaign.  So it’s been a long standing relationship that I don’t foresee coming to an end, although Judith is leaving at the end of 2011, so what that will be, whether a new person will come in with a new vision or idea.  And eventually that will be a really interesting use of the RED camera too. The idea of shooting dance.  For me part of the fun, I don’t know how you feel, is capturing the moment and I’m kind of proud that I get it.

DP – Definitely.

AE – But it’s an interesting idea to have people move and then pick the moment later… seems a little bit too easy but… heh.

DP – yeah, just a bit.  I guess the next question would be a simple one that we’ve already touched on.  Do you feel it’s still important to have a tangible book to show to clients, or do you feel that the website has completely eliminated that need?

AE – I wish the website would completely eliminate the need.  The amount of money that I spend and the time that I spend producing portfolios over the past twenty-five years is really pretty insane.  I’m at a point now where if I didn’t have to print another portfolio for the rest of the time I would be thrilled.   I think we’re getting awfully close to it being an archaic concept.  The iPad is the beginning of something that is quite likely going to take over too.  If people still think they want a book sent to them, I can see in another year it being an iPad type apparatus that you send in a padded box to people.  They’d turn it on and look at it as though it were a book.  The beautiful thing about seeing things on a computer screen, apart from the convenience, is that it’s very reminiscent to the quality of looking at film on a light table.   Which a lot of people who have just started photography in the last five – six years never got to see.  There is something about the luminescent quality of a transparency on a light table that could never really be matched.  This is a lot like it.  Looking at a really good quality monitor is about as good as it gets in some ways.  Short of looking at a beautiful platinum print in a gallery or something; that’s a whole different world.   But I think it’s on its way out.  We still have clients who want books so we’re still printing them.  There was a time in the 90’s when I had over twenty portfolios that were always having to be updated and in circulation at all times.  Now I have about half a dozen that are in circulation.  My agent keeps telling me we need them so I keep printing stuff.  It’s a drag making the prints, but I think we’re a year or two away from the portfolio becoming obsolete.

DP – One note on the whole website issue. The iPhone doesn’t use flash, nor do most other cell phones yet.  Your website, however is entirely flash.  We recently had an art buyer come in to class for a lecture and she mentioned how a large majority of people look at photographers websites on their phone.

AE – Wow, well ya know it’s a consideration.  My understanding is that there is an application that will allow flash on phones.  I know that Flash and Apple have some kind of problem and don’t get along.  So I don’t know whether it will work on the iPhone.  But like everything else, it’s a matter of time until it does get on there.  I think it could be worth just doing a separate site that’s not flash but I don’t want, personally, people hiring me from looking at my pictures on their phone.  I already have such a pet peeve about these people being on their F-ing hand-held devices all the time anyway.  Which is actually a plus for a physical printed portfolio.   For one thing you’ve got people looking at your website, it’s on their computer, they’re checking their email, their phone’s ringing, they’re in a room where the lighting is bad, it’s not an ideal way to have somebody look at your work.  There’s not much we can do about it, because that’s what everybody does now.  But, yeah, on the phone thing… I don’t know.  I would say it’s only a small consideration.   I think if someone is seriously considering hiring you they’re going to look at the computer screen.

DP – Yeah, just a random thought I had with the last question as I’m sitting here looking at your website.

AE – Heh yeah, so anyways. I certainly wouldn’t hire a hair and make-up artist, or a prop stylist just by looking at their stuff on a phone.

DP – Personally I can’t think of many websites I’ve looked at on the phone.

AE – Yeah, me neither.  I know that my rep actually got it figured out, so his flash site can be seen on an iPhone.

DP – oh cool.

AE – Yah I don’t know how he did it.

DP – cool.  So the next question.   You’ve been shooting for New York Magazine for some time now, and some of those images are editorial.  How do you compare your editorial experiences to your commercial ones?

AE – Well nine times out of ten the editorial experience, the actual experience of making photographs is much more creative and ultimately somewhat more enjoyable.  It will probably render a photograph or end result that’s going to be far longer lasting and more artful.   I think good editorial photography is by far vital for the soul, but also for your portfolios.  If you only do commercial work, especially the kind that I do, it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to getting more of that same kind of work.  It goes back to that thing where people want to hire a professional commercial photographer with experience, but they do want to believe that they are hiring someone who is really creative and artistic.

Editorial opportunities allow you to flex those muscles and have those things to show people.  It’s the only way that your portfolio or website can have a chance to grow; unless you do a lot of personal work.  So I think that the two co-exist in any successful career. They have to.  I don’t think you can have commercial success with out some of that editorial experience.  Now I think in certain worlds, like the still life world, I think… I’m not going to say the fashion world because usually the top top fashion guys or all the ads they do they’re still working for magazines.  That’s where you kind of get to do the fun stuff, and the beautiful stuff for the most part.  The years in my career when I haven’t had a good editorial outlet like a place like New York Magazine, I’ve definitely been a lot less happy, even if I’m making pretty decent money.  Because that kind of assignment, it just sucks the marrow out of your soul, even if you’re getting paid well.  Just taking these pictures of actors and semi-decent work up against a white background. After a while it’s just like, “what am I doing?”

DP – Now you just touched on celebrities.  A lot of people when they are just starting out are awestruck with the concept of shooting celebrities.  The more I learn the more I wonder what the experience is really like compared to doing editorial or commercial work.  Is it really as great as people think?

AE – No.  Yuh know, because I’ve been doing it so long. When I’m doing an assignment when I’m not photographing an actor, I always jokingly say it’s like a day off.  If I actually get to shoot with paid models that will naturally do what I ask them to do and may even collaborate, or stay all day.  For me that’s a treat.  Half the time, unfortunately with actors and the way this world of celebrity photography has become, they’re all doing too much of it.  I think it’s our fault for caring, and wanting to buy all of these magazines, and go to these gossip sites.  The need for all of this celebrity driven stuff is out of control.  I think whereas celebrities in the 80’s might have done a few photo shoots in a month, now they’re doing sometimes a photo shoot every day for two weeks.  [Celebrities] are sick of it, they don’t want to go anywhere, they don’t want to collaborate, their publicists are telling us it’s got to be short and get them out of here…  it’s become very difficult.

Now that’s not to say that the experience itself, and being with the person for a couple of hours, isn’t pleasant.  99% of the time I have an extremely pleasant experience.  I’ve been very fortunate to have met a lot of really interesting and creative people, from presidents to actors to writers to sports stars.   And sure, that aspect of it is pretty cool and makes for good conversation at dinner.  But it’s hard.  It’s really, really hard.

The part that’s the most frustrating and the most challenging is that you’re really not given the kind of control you are in the situations where you are shooting models or other types of subject matter.  So, it ain’t all it’s cut out to be.  You would have the same conversation with any other of my peers that photograph celebrities all the time.  There’s this yin and yang where it’s really great on the one hand and we have these really special experiences, but we fly back and forth from L.A. constantly, often over night, we’re put through the ringer of scheduling and demands.  It’s half really glamorous; it’s half the complete opposite.    I was at the film set in Atlanta, photographed a couple of the actors at 2pm and then had to hang around on set and didn’t get the last actor until 12:30am. And I got her for fifteen minutes.  Then I went to my hotel, got up three hours later, went to the airport to fly home.  It ain’t all it’s cut out to be, heh.  I think it’s probably even that way for the guys shooting Victoria Secret stuff in the Caribbean, yuh know?  Some of it’s great and fabulous, and some of it’s hard work, lousy scheduling, tough conditions, even if it’s super models in bikini’s on a beach doesn’t mean it’s easy or fun or glamorous or anything.  But there are many, many worse ways to make a living.  I remind myself often that I have a pretty luxurious set of problems.  I try very hard not to take it for granted and remain appreciative.  But the celebrity gig isn’t for everyone, that’s for sure.

DP – I’m sure.  Just a couple more questions.  One thing I have always been interested in is how photographers get their post-production style.  Whether they retouch themselves, or have assistants do it, or send out to have it done…  Can you tell me a little about your style?

AE – Sure, I guess my style is a little bit that I don’t have one. In terms of it’s pretty true to the image making process.  I don’t do anything terribly desaturated or wildly contrasting or grainy like the Jim Fiscus’ of the world, whose work I admire, but it’s just not me.  In my part of this industry there are times when I maintain some control of that and then there’s times where I really lose control.  Most of the commercial work, the movie posters and television advertising, those sorts of things, the images all go on a hard drive and go to the client, then what ever design team, and to be honest, I mean I have a copy here for me but I never really see them again until it’s the final product.  But the magazine stuff, especially some of the stuff from New York Magazine, once they’ve made the edit I will oversee the process of retouching and what ever little post-production things I do.  I try not to do too much.  There was a period when I had a retoucher that was really heavy handed and everything was way over retouched and wasn’t so happy with it.   I try to keep it a little more true to it’s natural self now.  So, some magazine stuff I oversee but the rest of it pretty much goes out the door and that’s it.

DP – Well I guess the last question is, are you currently taking any interns?

AE – Hahaha. Not really because we sort of downsized like the rest of the country did in 2009.  I did have a studio for about seven years and then a pretty big office with a staff after that.  Then I kind of ended up doing what a lot of people are doing which is, make it a lot smaller.  I have a freelance digital tech that comes in, and most of the post-production that we do is out of my agent’s office out in California.  So, we’re really not doing that now, had you called a few years earlier we might have been able to help yuh out.  Sorry I can’t help yuh there.

DP – That’s alright, I’ll keep looking.

AE – Yah and there’s lots of photographers up here that are looking.  You’re in Savannah right?

DP – yes.

AE – You know who is in Atlanta, is Liz Von Hoene.  Do you know her work?  She’s pretty amazing.

DP – No but I will look her up.

AE – She does a lot of work up here in NY and a lot of my freelance assistants work with her.  I finally looked her up the other day and she is extremely talented.  Apparently she’s got a big studio in Atlanta.  That might be worth looking in to.

DP – I will definitely look in to it.  Well thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

AE – Yeah, no problem it was a pleasure talking to you.  And good luck with your photographic career.

DP – Thank you.

All images in interview parts 1 and 2 are © Andrew Eccles.  For more information on Andrew Eccles and more of his work, please visit his website at www.andreweccles.com.

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